


Naked & Bruised

by crickets



Series: Naked & Bruised [2]
Category: Lost
Genre: Incest, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-06
Updated: 2007-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Mostly Claire/Sawyer with hintings of Jack/Sawyer and Claire/Jack.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Naked & Bruised

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly Claire/Sawyer with hintings of Jack/Sawyer and Claire/Jack.

**1\. Lost Her Damn Mind**

One night, weeks after Charlie dies, camp’s settling in, but Aaron won’t stop screaming. Every night’s like this, like he _knows_.

This time, she screams back, yells obscenities, pulls him from his crib, holds him up, pink feet dangling. _What’s the matter with you!?_

_You lost your damn mind, girlie?_ Sawyer barks, storms past the tarps, takes Aaron from her.

Hours later, with Aaron sleeping safely by Kate’s side, he goes to her, pulls her to him. _Not everybody cries,_ he says. And then, _He loved you, you know?_

_But I never loved him._

_What?_ He pulls free, searches her eyes. She kisses him then, not because it’s him, just needs to feel anything but empty. He kisses her back, lets her pull his hand to her stomach, farther, dipping below her panties and slipping his fingers through her wet folds.

She gasps, hips jolting up, urging him further. _Kate?_ he whispers, a question.

She puts her hand over his. _Just don’t stop._

_This can’t mean anything,_ he says, kissing her neck and sliding one finger into her, then two. She gasps, pushes herself roughly down on his hand when he stretches her open with a third.

_I know,_ she keens, and her voice hitches in her throat when he thumbs over her clit. She moans his name as he traces tiny circles.

_Shh,_ he whispers and covers her wet mouth with his as she contracts around his fingers.

After, she whispers, _Stay._

_Can’t,_ is all he says, leaves her there, and she expected nothing less.

 

**2\. It’s Not a Question**

She comes to him that first night, his tent empty now, and crawls next to him. His even breathing turns irregular when he wakes, the feel of her beside him. He wonders absently, her mouth closing over his, if she’s only returning the favor, trading her pain for his.

Somehow, it doesn’t matter.

The tent smells like her, and she feels a slight twinge of guilt, when he presses into her. But this isn’t about Kate. Mourning never is, not really.

Afterwards, they lie there together, his fingers curling in her hair, breath hot on her neck, one hand tracing up and down the length of her, naked and bruised and his, and she knows it’s about more, remembers how he looked at her in the days after that night in her tent, hears his empty words, _This can’t mean anything._

She had kissed him once after, found him on the beach, pushed him behind a cluster of rocks, pressed against him, made him hard before Jack walked up, making enough noise for them to part before he saw. Their meeting place, she figured.

_You loved her,_ she says. It’s not a question. The question would be, _do you love him?_ But the words don’t come, because then she’d have to answer it too.

 

**3\. Lost of all Her Usefulness**

He grips the handle tighter, ‘til his callused hands burn, digs until it hurts not to dig, and then until he can’t anymore, sinks down into the shadows of that cool hole, propped against the wall, eyes closed, head tilted back.

His lids fly open when he hears the thump of footfalls pounding into the earth in front of him, a live body joining him in the grave.

_Let me,_ she says.

He stands, tense, embarrassed, protective. _Go back to camp,_ he orders. _I got this, Mamacita._ The word hangs in the air, the nickname ringing with its untruth, lost of all its usefulness.

She steps closer, her small hands closing over his on the handle, and looks up with hollow eyes. He knows there ain’t no coming back from where she’s been. _Sawyer,_ she pleads, _I have to._

_Expect there won’t be any stopping you,_ he says.

_No,_ she confirms.

_Didn’t think so,_ he relents, slips his hands from under hers, watches her shove the blade into the dirt, no care for him at all, and climbs out of the tiny grave.

He finds Jack standing at a distance. _Keep watch over her, doc,_ he says. Hands graze against each other and linger just a bit too long. _You’re her family now._

 

**4\. She Once Whispered into His Ear**

When Jack is killed, Sawyer is with him, away from camp – another fucking suicide mission. When he returns, he finds her immediately, tells her himself, and they don’t surface for days. Not even when Sun pokes her head into Claire’s tent, finds them tangled up in each other, sleeping and nude and exposed. Sun averts her eyes, tells them it’s time, asks if they have anything they’d like to say.

_Wait,_ Sawyer calls to her, but she’s already out of earshot.

Claire doesn’t ask him what he was going to say, because no words can possibly convey what Jack meant to them, meant to all of them. He wasn’t what everybody thought, but at the same time he was. He was both. He was exactly the man they knew, and exactly the man everyone else knew, the perfect duality, no part untrue.

She once told him, whispered into his ear when they were alone together, _Everybody dies alone._ He had only kissed her, made love to her like the walls were crumbling down, and that was his only answer, the only way he could cope with that truth.

Now, lying there in Sawyer’s arms, she regrets that moment. Because maybe that illusion was the one thing that kept Jack going, kept him strong, and maybe it was those words that put the gun to his head, pulled the trigger.

_Maybe._

 

**5\. A Day, No More**

You never know it’s the last time until it is, and by then, it’s too late. So when Sawyer packs his last few belongings, kisses her, and promises her he’ll be back soon – _a day, no more_ – she doesn’t think to say goodbye, or bring him inside the shelter, give herself over to him one last time, or ask him to stay.

It’s all so routine, the coming and going, hunting and scavenging, the constant search for a safer place. She doesn’t even think to worry.

Three days later, she packs her things and sets off to find his body.


End file.
